Mineralogical hardness: period 6d

Hardness ranges on scale from 1 to 10 and depends upno the ability of a material to scratch another.

Units

Moh scale

Notes

The scale is roughly logarithmic, that is, a material with a hardness of 8 is roughly 10 times as hard as another material whose hardness is 7, which in turn is 10 times as hard as a material whose hardness is 6, and so on. The minerals chosen by Moh for this scale are:

10: diamond

9: corundum

8: topaz

7: quartz

6: orthoclase

5: apatite

4: fluorite

3: calcite

2: gypsum

1: talc

Literature sources

G.V. Samsonov (Ed.) in Handbook of the physicochemical properties of the elements, IFI-Plenum, New York, USA, 1968.

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